Outdoors Tragic: A little heavy and bulky, 'throwback styling' is a tad frumpy

Outdoors Grabbit? 'Throwback styling' is one description and it's a solid, traditional hill-walking jacket that's not pretending to be alpine sexy, light or packable. No frills, handy for the hills sums it up. The baked beans on toast of waterproof jackets.

Era Jacket - The Tech

The Era uses the base Gore-Tex fabric in two-layer form. That means it has an additional drop liner that's part mesh and part solid fabric. That adds some weight and bulk, but is sometimes preferred by walkers who want a more traditional-feeling jacket.

'It’s not pretending to be a glammed-up mountaineering, scrambling, climbing or fast-moving alpine shell, but is proud to be an out-and-out walker’s jacket'

The rest of the design is best described as solid. You get plenty of pockets - two outside ones, an internal one that's about the right size for a phone or wallet and a map pocket that's tucked away under the double storm flap and outside the main-zip in time-honoured fashion.

Everything's adjustable and, for more general use, the jacket has the bonus of a fold-down hood that uses press-studs to hold it together then sits under a Velcro tab at the base of the neck.

Sprayway women's Era Jacket

Lukasz Warzecha

Era Jacket - Performance

The Era really is a no-nonsense, slightly weighty, traditional walking jacket with the sort of classic features and styling that wouldn't have looked out of place 20-odd years ago. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but the general feeling was that it was aimed at a more traditional hill-walker than other jackets we tested.

'It's like something I used to sell when I worked an outdoor shop back in 2002'

The separate liner adds to the traditional feel as well, though one of our testers was very taken with the soft fleece panels around the back of the next and chin area. To be fair, the conservative styling wasn't helped by the sombre dark blue colour, which Lukasz our alpine-orientated photographer took quite badly...

The hood was decently effective. It fits well, moves with the head and gives decent peripheral vision at the expensive of a little bit of cheek protection. It rolls away and tabs down too, handy in town or if you don't like to trail a flapping hood in your wake.

Finally, no problem with the adjustability of the generous provision of pockets including a map-pocket tucked away under the double storm-flap. Happily it's below breast level too. Good call.

Sprayway women's Era Jacket

Lukasz Warzecha

Era Jacket - Verdict

The baked beans on toast of waterproof jackets, the Era doesn't pretend to be anything other than what it is: a solidly built, slightly bulky and heavy, traditional walking jacket with generous sizing.

If you're after something that looks like it's just emerged from an ascent of the North Face of the Eiger, you'll be disappointed, but if you just want a well-priced waterproof with a decent hood for day-to-day walking it's a decent, unspectacular call.

Interestingly, Sprayway also produces a slicker, non-lined Gore-Tex jacket called the Pandora, which would be our choice from the brand for mountain walking. We've used the men's equivalent, the Zeus, and it works very well.